


Slipstream Afternoon

by tibeyg



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Australian AU, Bottom Arthur, High School Teachers, Infidelity, M/M, definitely not based on any of my high school teachers whom I shipped in my wild youth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 10:53:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10615404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tibeyg/pseuds/tibeyg
Summary: Merlin looks at a photo and feels a bit shit about himself. Lucky Arthur's there to cheer him up!





	

**Author's Note:**

> I finish a piece of writing for the first time in possibly a millennium for the Bottom Arthur thing because I ideologically support bottom!Arthur. Do we still do the disclaimery stuff? Self-explanatory but BBC Merlin isn't mine.

Arthur says to him just before lunch ends, ‘She won’t be home tonight,’ and Merlin says, ‘Great.’

They catch the same train back for the first time, standing in the vestibule in the after-school press of rush hour, holding onto the luridly yellow pole for support with their briefcases between their feet. Merlin lives pretty far away from the school, but Arthur’s tasteful little Inner West townhouse is just twenty minutes’ train ride and ten minutes’ walk. Because they’re unconsciously hurrying, though, the walk takes just seven minutes; seven minutes of hastening through the knot of narrow streets bedecked in the afternoon heat of pungent flora and lengthening days. 

The interiors are dark. The floors are timber, slightly-scuffed with age. Merlin is willing to bet that they haven’t been replaced since the house was built in God-knows-when-but-most-likely-during-the-1800s. Arthur takes him to the kitchen for a bite first, the urgency of the seven-minute walk withering into nervous procrastination, and gives him an impromptu tour: ‘Living room here! Stairs. Cupboard under the stairs – that’s where we keep the alcohol, hah. Toilet, if you need it. Aaaand, kitchen here!’

He sets his briefcase heavily onto the table and starts to potter around busily. Merlin takes his time. The kitchen is cluttered with paraphernalia of dulled chrome. The fridge magnets bear real estate agents’ smiling faces and a council calendar from four years ago. There’s a novel lying open, a bookmark peeping out between the fan of pages. It’s probably not an atypical household fixture of a staff member in their faculty, in all honesty. On the walls are photographs of Arthur, looking younger, and a black woman next to him. It is the first time Merlin has seen her face, and he feels briefly the twinge of guilt as he eyes her open, glowing, trusting features. Then he looks over to her husband.

He’s got the toaster going, and is almost frantically stirring two mugs of Milo. Merlin approaches him. 

‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m _fine_ ,’ he says in a way that doesn’t sound fine at all. A drop of chocolatey milk springs out of the mug and onto the benchtop. Merlin wraps his hands quickly around Arthur’s.

‘We don’t have to –‘

‘No, no, what? I want to.’ He drops his head onto Merlin’s shoulder and heaves a huge, shuddery breath. ‘I’ve wanted to for so long.’

Merlin allows himself, under the photographic gaze of Arthur’s wife, a brief kiss to his head. His smell is stronger than usual, a product of perspiration from the walk. ‘We can take it easy. You don’t have to be nervous, you know me.’ He gives an uncharacteristic manly ruffle to Arthur’s arm, and mentally cringes at it. 

‘Can we just. Finish the stupid Milo and the damn toast first?’ Arthur mumbles sullenly into his shoulder, and Merlin snorts and says yes.

They sit with a corner between them and eye each other as they eat. Arthur relaxes visibly as he soaks and eats his toast, and he’s soon slurping up the remaining Milo with mock lasciviousness, winking exaggeratedly as Merlin laughs and licking up his milk moustache with a fake moan worthy of pornography. Merlin takes him to bed.

Arthur’s room is at the very top of a set of very rickety stairs, each step bowed in the middle with wear. It’s not big; old houses tend to have smaller rooms. His wife’s room is on the level below. They share a kiss in Arthur’s isolated space, an indulgent thing that topples back into the puffy doona and pillows and soft Arthur-smelling sheets. Merlin holds Arthur’s face between his hands, and Arthur hugs his waist. 

‘How do you want to do this?’ Merlin says adoringly, and Arthur pinches his very red lips together and says,

‘I’ve been preparing for you,’ and pulls open his bedside drawer and pulls out – to Merlin’s ill-concealed delight – condoms and a bottle of good, nice, thick lubricant, and then fishes beneath the bed to surface again, gasping a little, flushed a lot, and grasping in his hand what is unmistakably a butt plug, and Merlin says,

‘ _Oh_ ,’ in a tone of unmistakable interest.

Arthur throws the plug aside and throws off his clothes, and when he’s all nice and naked he barely lets Merlin take his time to enjoy the sight, because he starts kissing Merlin madly and pulling off his clothes too.

‘You want my dick so badly, don’t you?’ Merlin says as he pushes Arthur onto his back. ‘Your first time with a man, and you’re all set to go.’ Then he pulls the downy doona out from beneath Arthur’s flushed, thick body. ‘And why the fuck do you still sleep with a doona? It’s frickin _November_.’

‘Can’t be bothered to get out the thinner blankets,’ says Arthur, and pulls him down for more kissing. It’s so good, so nice to have this finally, to have Arthur’s warm skin – slicked slightly with sweat – sliding against his own, to have Arthur moan and laugh as loudly as he wants into his ear, to have his unclothed cock press against Arthur’s. He thinks of the smiling woman’s face downstairs, and thinks jealously, _this is mine. She does not have this._

When he unearths the plug from the tangle of doona, Arthur – glowing pink and hair awry, its blond darkening with sweat – says, ‘I’m clean.’

‘We’re still doing this with condoms,’ Merlin says.

‘No no, I mean,’ he pauses, ‘I mean like. My arsehole is.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. I.’ He licks his lips. His eyelids lower. ‘I washed it in the staff toilets. When she told me she wouldn’t be back. Sat my arse over the sink with the tap going and scrubbed it out there and then. And then I stuck a finger up too. To clean it inside.’

‘Yeah?’

‘I love having things in there. I imagine they’re you.’

‘You don’t have to imagine any more,’ Merlin says, and puts his lubed-up fingers into Arthur’s little pink arsehole. Arthur moans so loudly. They’ve opened the windows for ventilation; his neighbours are bound to hear. Merlin wants them to. The soft little passage inside squeezes around him once – in surprise – and relaxes, and then starts pulsing with a weirdly comforting rhythm. With his free hand, Merlin awkwardly slicks up the plug, pulls out his fingers, and puts it in.

Arthur’s eyes roll into his head. Merlin’s do the same when he sees it in place. It’s not like the usual ones made for men, all plain and boringly utilitarian; no, this one’s got a massive fake jewel on the base, which makes Arthur’s anus look studded with it. Nestled between the furred, golden globes of his bulky bum, it looks pretty and completely obscene.

‘I bought it at a sex shop,’ Arthur manages. He’s mushing half of his face into the pillow, almost unconsciously, the way cats butt their heads into friendly palms for pats. ‘I was so desperate for something up me. They only had ones for women, and I pretended that it was for her. And then I put it in, and I couldn’t stop looking at it in the mirror. I had my arse in the mirror for _hours_ , just staring at it over my shoulder.’

‘You never told me,’ Merlin says in a slightly choked voice. He runs his fingertips over the jewel reverently. ‘It makes your arsehole so pretty. Get on your knees.’

The jewel prises the butt cheeks apart to give Merlin an unobscured view. He runs his hands over the ample bum and presses his thumbs in on either side of the jewel so that Arthur calls out again when he feels the stuffed hole stretch. 

‘I’m going to fuck this glorious thing,’ Merlin says in wonder. He is so hard. Arthur’s already _dripping_. And Merlin just has to twist the base out and shove it back in a few times, and before long, Arthur’s rocking back onto it steadily, a constant stream of staccato noises spilling from his mouth. He’s so sweaty now. The afternoon heat steams up the smell of sex in the room into a thick haze, and Merlin goes dizzy with it.

He pulls the thing out shortly because he has to get inside. But then he stares and stares at the O it leaves behind, and marvels at how red and puffy and wet it looks as it flutters before his gaze. 

‘Merlin? Merlin… _Merlin_!’

He tastes lube. He opens his mouth against the O and sticks his tongue in as far as it will go, and moans into it, and strokes his tongue along the top of the passage. Saliva is dripping unhindered from his mouth. He can’t swallow. He can barely breathe, and Arthur clamping frantically onto his tongue hardly helps.

‘Fuck me,’ Arthur sobs. ‘Fuck me now, I need you,’ and Merlin does.

He goes slow. He flips Arthur back over and tucks his legs over his hips. He adds lube. He adds so much lube, so much that the excess squelches out when he puts his dick in. He makes love to Arthur like they’re married, like the woman in the photo doesn’t exist and they can be like this forever, forever fused together with no fallout. He doesn’t thrust in-out-in-out, he mushes his hips against Arthur’s bum in tiny roll after roll, not wanting to unstick himself from Arthur. And Arthur clings on, butt still squeezing on and on and on like some sort of anal madman and says a ton of stuff like,

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ and ‘you feel huge, you’re filling me up,’ and ‘just give it to me, give it,’ and ‘ _there_! There, there, there, yes! Yes yes,’ and Merlin says,

‘How did I ever? How did I ever manage to not just fuck you every time I saw you? You are bliss. Your arse is _crazy_. I won’t even be able to look at you any more without popping a stiffy. I’ll be teaching and you’ll walk past the door and I’ll just pop one right there, right in front of all the kids, and they’ll have to fire me for indecency. Shit, Arthur.’

He fucks him harder, and rubs Arthur’s cock until he comes, curling into Merlin and clamping his arse down so hard Merlin can’t even move his cock. Then he keeps going, hard because he wants to get it over quick so it doesn’t get too uncomfortable for Arthur, the thighs going _slap slap slap_ against that arse and then he does too.

In the glowing aftermath, after Arthur buries the condom beneath the tissues in his bin and insinuates his hot and sweaty body over Merlin’s, Merlin strokes idly over the wet fucked-open gape and stares at the ceiling. As the high settles, his mind wanders unhelpfully to the wife.

‘How was it then? Your first time with a real dick,’ he says as an attempt to distract himself from the mental image of her happy, accusatory face.

‘Yeah,’ Arthur says. It sounds almost blurry, and he nuzzles down into Merlin’s chest. ‘I’m going to be sore for so long, you fucked me so well.’ Merlin feels the anus twitch. ‘Mmm. It feels a bit sloppy now.’

‘It’ll be fine after a while.’ Merlin rubs it and sighs and looks at the top of the blond head on his chest, and meets its bashful gaze when Arthur flicks his eyes up to him.

‘Are you happy? I’m happy. I always thought consummation was an end goal for us, cos we could never do it properly. But it feels like a beginning.’

‘The beginning of your divorce procedures, maybe?’ Merlin says, half-joking.

Arthur stills. ‘I’ve been unfair to you.’

‘Look, I understand if –‘

‘No. No, I have no excuse. It’s only cowardice stopping me now. You’ve suffered for it. She deserves better than this, too.’ Arthur looks hard at him. ‘I love you, you know.’

‘I realise.’ Then he smiles. ‘I feel similarly.’

The sweat cools. It’s still warm out, but it feels comparatively chilly and Arthur pulls the doona over them. Merlin closes his eyes, and he can see it in his mind’s eye: the house, its old timber floors, its clutter, its books. The two of them, naked and aglow with love, cuddled together, the sole inhabitants. The photographs below of Arthur and, beside him, Merlin – smiling, together, stripped of barriers.

To Arthur he says, ‘Tell me about your wife.’

And he does.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://salinatrixx.tumblr.com) if you want to pop over and say hi and I actually usually draw so you can check that out there if you wanna. Thanks for reading and feel free to leave a comment!
> 
> If you like the enemies-to-lovers trope then check out [my gf's gay novel](http://valeaida.tumblr.com/post/149576789996/an-elegy-info-post), illustrated by me!


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